So I wanted to try the 16x10 string pattern on my 16x19 racquet, courtesies to TWU for the idea. I've strung it with Black Mamba Gear 17g in the mains at 60lbs and in the crosses I put in a used set of Solinco Tour Bite 16g at 65lbs. The reason behind using a used set of Tour Bite was because I needed the most stiff string that I could possibly get, strung at a high tension to prevent warping of the head.

Stringing was very easy, only took half the time it would usually take because the crosses were halved. When I finished stringing, the mains were very loose and the crosses were very tight. I tried tapping the racquet against my hand and it felt like it was strung at the low 50lb range. I used the string tension app to measure it's tension, it read approximately 67.6lbs, though I could only use 16x16 as the string pattern setting(the lowest the developer put in). I left it over night and saw that the tension on the racquet felt like it increased a little, now it felt like it was strung at the mid 50's. The racquettune app read 63.9lbs.

It feels very promising, I'll post my findings probably on Thursday and maybe a video during the weekend showing my shots with a 16x19 racquet strung at 63lbs and this bad boy.

Cheers!

Forgot to mention the racquet, I used a old Prokennex Ceramic Challenger 90 to test this. I might try my dunlop 200 tour if this goes well.

According to TWU, their racquet strung at 30lbs had less spin than their 60lb racquet with 16x19 and 16x10, also it had less spin than the 30lb racquet with a 16x19 pattern. The racquet feels loose as it is now, I'm glad I strung at the 60's.

Diminishing returns.
Past a certain point in anything, you lose out on the benefits.
Even eating too much ice cream can be a detriment.
That's why I suggest stringing all the holes at 46 lbs.....what I consider the lowest tension I can effectively play with.

Diminishing returns.
Past a certain point in anything, you lose out on the benefits.
Even eating too much ice cream can be a detriment.
That's why I suggest stringing all the holes at 46 lbs.....what I consider the lowest tension I can effectively play with.

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The thing is the racquet already feels like it's strung in the mid 50's to low 50's and the mains move a lot. If I strung any lower I probably wouldn't have as much control because the mains would move a lot more. Also, I prefer my racquets to feel a little tight. Never really liked the loose feeling.

Wouldn't used strings have it's elasticity stripped away from them, making them not loose as much tension as new strings? I always thought used strings would be like pre-stretched strings.

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Not exactly. The tension loss of poly is not simply the poly losing elasticity. It is, as you can imagine, the string simply being stretched out due to the force you're applying it. Once you stretch it out so much to the point that it can't return to its original shape, then you've taken the elasticity out of it and the poly is dead. Now, that seems as though it's what you want, yes? No, because you are now re-applying a load to the strings by restringing them which is weakening the string rather than making it stronger. The tension loss now is going to be far more linear, but it is definitely guaranteed.

Think about it like this. If you want to keep something closed, then you need something either incredibly strong, or, something which can sustain a load elastically. If you're trying to keep the trunk of your car closed, then you could either use cord to tie it closed (the former case) OR you could use bungee cords (the latter). Naturally, like with tennis string, both cords are made of the same material (say, Nylon), only one is elastic. Now, the former is inherently going to be stiffer, but you rarely see this in favor of bungee cord. The reason is because since the bungee cord is elastic and resilient, it can store energy in it which increases the strength of the length of cord as long as you don't push it to fatigue and then failure. That length here is the crucial bit. The length of elastic cord needed is going to be much shorter than the equivalent rope needed to keep your trunk closed.

Likewise, a set of new string is stronger than the same 40ft length of dead string. The moment you apply a force to the fixed cord on the trunk (say, you hit a pothole and the trunk tries to fly open), you're going to damage it. With the elastic one, it will stretch and then return to its original state. With your tennis string, you hit a ball and the new string is going to stretch and then become shorter again due to its resiliency. With the dead string, you're stretching it out and it's not getting shorter. It's going to stay at that new longer and weaker state.

Hopefully that makes sense, I wasn't really too sure how to word that.

Think about it like this. If you want to keep something closed, then you need something either incredibly strong, or, something which can sustain a load elastically. If you're trying to keep the trunk of your car closed, then you could either use cord to tie it closed (the former case) OR you could use bungee cords (the latter). Naturally, like with tennis string, both cords are made of the same material (say, Nylon), only one is elastic. Now, the former is inherently going to be stiffer, but you rarely see this in favor of bungee cord. The reason is because since the bungee cord is elastic and resilient, it can store energy in it which increases the strength of the length of cord as long as you don't push it to fatigue and then failure. That length here is the crucial bit. The length of elastic cord needed is going to be much shorter than the equivalent rope needed to keep your trunk closed.
[Condensed to save space on the thread.{

How badly did your hoop distort? The total cross string tension is much less than the mains. Some ofvus have dealt with this by using kevlar mains at 40 pounds and poly crosses at 60-65. Even at 35 pounds the kevlar mains are stiffer than copoly at 60, so you still get good snapback and avoid excessive Normal force offset and attendant high rebound angle. Easier to just get a Steam at this point though.

How badly did your hoop distort? The total cross string tension is much less than the mains. Some ofvus have dealt with this by using kevlar mains at 40 pounds and poly crosses at 60-65. Even at 35 pounds the kevlar mains are stiffer than copoly at 60, so you still get good snapback and avoid excessive Normal force offset and attendant high rebound angle. Easier to just get a Steam at this point though.

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Believe it or not there was no distortion when comparing it to my other sticks. I only used a 5lb difference with the crosses being the tighter one, I guess because I used a very stiff string it didn't allow my frame to distort?

Also, my frame is very flexy so it should have distorted but it didn't.

Considering the cost of strings it seems better to just demo the actual Steam 99s & from TW which works out to only about $3 per racket in a box of 4 for a week.

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I would demo the Steam however it's a 99in frame....if it came in a 90 I would definitely demo the hell out of it. Also 16x15 vs 16x10, the missing five crosses interests me :twisted: (Even though this has been tested before, not on a 90in racquet)

Also, its only Black mamba which is really cheap for a reel and it's a used set of Solinco Tourbite from a racquet, why not?

Okay so I played with it on Thursday as planned and have a lot of things to say.

Here's a timeline of how the strings played for me in my 3 hour session.
1. The first 10-20 minutes were probably the worst I have ever played in my entire tennis career. Every ball was unpredictable when I hit it, some went long some steered off course by 5 feet. Hitting it in the sweet spot resulted in random launch angles. Brushing up a lot resulted in very high bounces that landed either very deep or close to the back fence. The moment you make contact with the ball you knew it was mushy and you couldn't place your shots.
2. From there things started to get a little better. Around a half an hour I started to dial in my shots and stopped thinking of brushing up against the ball to get it into play. I just hit through the ball with a strong finish and this resulted in a very deep ball that spun down into the court at the last moment and kicked up fairly high. One of my balls actually kicked over my 6'1" friend.
3. Around the hour mark I started to feel that I could sort of place my shots a little bit less accurately than normal, but they were going in the general direction. I started serving and this is where everything turned around. Flat serves felt so natural and I could place them pretty well. Second serves kicked pretty high, around the highest I ever served before. Slice serves were a dream on the deuce side(righty) and sliced off the court and onto the very next court in pretty sick angle.
4. After serving I tried some volleys and smashes. Reflex volleys were just terrible, they all went deep or long without me having too much control on them, put away volleys were great as long as I held them and followed through with my momentum. Smashes were like my serves, felt great and I could pick my places easier. I hit this one smash from behind the baseline and it made a 40-60 degree turn from the right line to the middle, threw my friend off.
5. I then spent the rest of my playing time playing points, just awful. Serving wasn't too much of a problem. Returning was B*&ch, I had to resort to chipping them into play, just couldn't get a solid contact with them.

So to conclude this long summary, I got back home and immediately cut out my strings and will probably never try this again. It was a fun experiment, however I probably screwed up somewhere because I was expecting better results. It felt far inferior to the Wilson Spin racquets.

Moral of this playtest, don't string it like this unless you are willing to go 60 mains and 70+ crosses with a very stiff cross string and maybe also in the mains.

^^ About 2 or so months before the 99s was available I tried 2 sets of crosses on the same side followed by 2 normally woven, repeat. The unpredictability of the stringbed threw me off more than the spin did to the opponent. lol. I cut it out too and realized I just wasted 5 bucks. If I were going to try this again I would just weave pairs of crosses on the same side, so the end result would be similar to what you did but with all the crosses strung, more support, & less needed tension. But then I'd just try the Steam. I was going to suggest trying the spaggetti pattern like TW tried, with all the crosses woven on the same side. That would be really interesting to hear how it turns out

^^ Interesting. The reason your 14x16 experiment felt like it had no sweet spot was because you re-tensioned used string and it is not only completely dead, but also freshly tensioned. I had a new multi string job that I hated, in old racket that I didn't care for, so I mounted it on a 6pts mount and pulled it all out. I restrung it in a smaller headed frame and it was totally dead and harsh, like dead poly! If even an almost new multi became harsh then a poly/kevlar with even less elasticity would most likely be the same or worse.

Yes, you are perfectly right on the dead feel of the re-tensioned poly.

Being totally new to poly, I wanted to push the boundaries and see how it would behave and feel. Out of curiousity, I've also done many "unspeakable" things to poly strings...

Spaghetti is too radical and time consuming although i've harboured thoughts of doing it

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^^ Actually I meant the pattern the TW prof just used recently in his string/spin experiment, I think they refered to it as "faux spagetti pattern" or something like that. They just pretty much weaved every cross on the same side so that it they were not interwoven, in the picture it looked like the crosses just went straight across splitting have every other main to one side of the racket face.

I haven't heard of anyone hitting with one of those so it would be interesting to hear from anyone trying it out.

I think one side of the racket would generate only heaps of topspin and the other side only heaps of sidespin!

OMG! I am getting drawn into this.........

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My previous low friction experiment from the first page didn't turn out so well - the response was very unpredictable and the ball would come off the interwoven and same side crosses differently. I decided to try another experiment after realizing I had not cut out the previous string job and replacing the crosses would cost 75cents. I mounted the frame on my stringer, cut out the crosses, & replaced it w/a half set of 12yr old Liberty 16 in a simplified pattern: weave pairs of crosses on the same side, which would allow me to use all crosses, give better support than skipping crosses, and require only normal tensions.
I expected terrible results but it turned out pretty good and I played more aggressively than with my usual APDGT (currently strung with 4G hybrid) in back to back games, which I won both of 6-0, 6-2 (my opponent was serving better in the 2nd game).
The racket is a very flexible, 95sq inch old school Dunlop which came in weighing over 13oz & swinging heavy like a wooden racket. I bought it used for $15 & was heavily modified but now plays very similar to a Donnay Gold @ around ~12oz ~340 SW.

Strings were Cyber Blue mains / Liberty 16 crosses @ 55lbs.
The strings seem beat up already after only about 1-1hr & 15min today, previously had 30-45min on the mains.